FBI MoneyPak scam

I didn't see a thread about this in search so I wanted to share with you all an experience I recently had that initially left me baffled & a little
nervous. I received a notification that my computer had been locked due to violating copyright laws, illegally viewing or distributing copyright
material, and pornography. It looked authentic with the FBI logo on it, my I.P. address, and location, and various statutes that I supposedly
infringed upon.

There was a message indicating that I had within 72 hours to pay a fine up to $200 or be subject to deprivation of liberty from 4-12 years, and
additional criminal charges being filed against me.

The notice urges you to purchase a MoneyPak card from a retailer, and load it with the requested amount to send, and if you have a problem to contact
cybercrime@doj.gov

I was able to log onto another acct and did a search to confirm my suspicions of what I discovered to be "ransomware" and was able to remove the
program from my PC.

Here is a tutorial from McAfee (Do not use their anti-virus software, it's sub-par) which has
some good directions for removal.

Just wanted to share this with the community so that you do not fall victim to this out of fear of reprisal.

Thanks for the heads up on this...I haven't heard of this scam yet . ..I always get the ones that start off " dear madam, I am barista John smith
from Nigeria bank and have 300 million dollars of a distant relative of yours..." ...although the funniest one that I got was an email from the
airport luggage claims department in Chicago . They had found my bank card with $20,000 on it, and wanted me to send them $50.00 so they could send it
to me certified....what a bunch of bull crap!!!!!! ....anyway, thanks for the heads up!

So people who have been doing naughty things will stop dead in the their tracks and go "Ohno, red tube.. wuuhhh I better pay this before the wife
finds out" and fork over cash to some shonky cretins out there.

Plenty of nooks and crannies out there that people may have been accidentally to or what not, who will think this is legit.

I say a very similar scam on a friends computer here in the U.K. last summer but instead of the F.B.I. it was Metropolitian Police.
I just wiped her hard drive and reinstalled Windows but she feel for it and was panicing.

I didn't see a thread about this in search so I wanted to share with you all an experience I recently had that initially left me baffled & a little
nervous. I received a notification that my computer had been locked due to violating copyright laws, illegally viewing or distributing copyright
material, and pornography. It looked authentic with the FBI logo on it, my I.P. address, and location, and various statutes that I supposedly
infringed upon.

There was a message indicating that I had within 72 hours to pay a fine up to $200 or be subject to deprivation of liberty from 4-12 years, and
additional criminal charges being filed against me.

The notice urges you to purchase a MoneyPak card from a retailer, and load it with the requested amount to send, and if you have a problem to contact
cybercrime@doj.gov

I was able to log onto another acct and did a search to confirm my suspicions of what I discovered to be "ransomware" and was able to remove the
program from my PC.

Here is a tutorial from McAfee (Do not use their anti-virus software, it's sub-par) which has
some good directions for removal.

Just wanted to share this with the community so that you do not fall victim to this out of fear of reprisal.

My whole screen faded out to complete white and an FBI INTERNET CRIMES DIVISION page came up same way.

It entirely...and I do mean ENTIRELY...dumped my whole computer hard drive, operating system except for the white screen.

I had to have the drive completely wiped clean, OS re-installed. Luckily, at work I have an IT friend who hooked up a SATA patch cord to look into the
drive alone without using the infected OS...see my files and cut and paste them into an external drive.

I didnt pay any $$$ but freaked out completely. Sitting there watching your screen wash out-white and the fake FBI pop up was heart stopping. Then
trying and trying to start it back up...but getting a plain white screen...whoa.

Ive heard people sent $$ in more than once following the bogus instructions...and then sent in even MORE $$$ when it didnt come on.

Friends beware! Scan frequently and read up on past and current malware, virus and trojans attacks. There are many..

That wasn't true for me. I lost ALL...ALL control. You couldn't turn it of, turn it back on...nothing...I had absolutely no key, button...nothing
would work. There was a total removal-hijack.

Even my IT guy said even he couldn't get any control. It was the worst he ever saw as it completely wiped out everything. On, off, window,
screens...you name it. It only had their one white screen controlled only by them.

What you suggested may have worked for you, but not everyone. As I said, to follow your advice, I would have had to have some even minimal control to
say even turn it off and back on...when no key would work.

I've had this happen to me about six seven months ago and it scared the bleep outta me. Nothing worked, completely froze up my computer. Don't know
if I were just lucky and caught it, but I manually shut off my computer, got on my lap top and did a search on it and found it to be a scam, then to
make short story long found that AVG free seemed to do a good job of removing it along with a scan with Malwarebytes Anti-malware. Don't know if
this'll be any help to anyone else, but can't hurt.

It happend to my SO. She was looking for apartments, and got poped with that, she woke me up franticly. I had to explaine to her it was a virus. The
second I seen that it was asking for money, I knew right away, Now I have to get it fixed. SUCKS.

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